Hydra Nightingale (2017)
for solo contrabass
This piece was written with and for Kyle Motl. Kyle gave the premiere at a Subtropics Festival Biennial concert in March 2017, at Audioteque in Miami.
The material of the piece is largely composed of sounds that Kyle has developed as part of his practice as an improviser, and strongly reflects our friendship and collaboration. I favor crunchy, complex, sharp, unpredictable, rattly, noisy, and ultra-tactile sounds. This work has four sections, one for each autonomous head of a healthy mutant songbird. The heads solo, then interweave their songs with each other in the final section. Lyrical lines are punctuated by crunchy, sparkling, noisy, unstable sounds that vibrate the skin at close range. Searching for a fitting title with Kyle, we somehow ended up at Heinrich Heine's nightingales. These were for Heine a symbol of a revolution that involves the sensing body, open to the world's beauty.